Abstract

This work on yaws is the culmination of a thorough and comprehensive review of both the ancient and the modern literature on the subject. The author has divided his material into sixteen chapters which are in logical sequence of arrangement, beginning with the historical review and concluding with a discussion of the much debated subject of the mutual etiology of syphilis and yaws.

In the historical sketch the author suggests that the Israelites, among many other ailments of the Exodus, were afflicted with yaws rather than with leprosy, the two diseases being confused. Doubtless too, the infection was known to the old Arabian physicians, but the first definite description of Framboesia is to be credited to Bontius during the first quarter of the 17th century.